JWST captured the most thrilling and inspiring space images of 2022

Space

The launch of the much-delayed James Webb Space Telescope finally paid off in 2022, as the orbiting observatory delivered jaw-dropping pictures throughout the year

By Leah Crane

14 December 2022

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/053/01GFRYSFM89AFADVAA0W625BSB NASA?s James Webb Space Telescope?s mid-infrared view of the Pillars of Creation strikes a chilling tone. Thousands of stars that exist in this region disappear ? and seemingly endless layers of gas and dust become the centerpiece. The detection of dust by Webb?s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) is extremely important ? dust is a major ingredient for star formation. Many stars are actively forming in these dense blue-gray pillars. When knots of gas and dust with sufficient mass form in these regions, they begin to collapse under their own gravitational attraction, slowly heat up ? and eventually form new stars. Although the stars appear missing, they aren?t. Stars typically do not emit much mid-infrared light. Instead, they are easiest to detect in ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared light. In this MIRI view, two types of stars can be identified. The stars at the end of the thick, dusty pillars have recently eroded the material surrounding them. They show up in red because their atmospheres are still enshrouded in cloaks of dust. In contrast, blue tones indicate stars that are older and have shed most of their gas and dust. — The famous Pillars of Creation, as聽seen by JWST
NASA, ESA, CSA STSCI

Astronomers began 2022 waiting with bated breath for the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It in January, then aligned its mirrors and tested its cameras.

There were 344 鈥渟ingle-point failures鈥� 鈥� elements of the launch and deployment of the telescope that would have been catastrophic if they went wrong 鈥� and not a single one proved to be a problem.

NASA released the telescope鈥檚 first fantastic images in July, showing the Carina Nebula, the Southern Ring Nebula, a group of galaxies called Stephan鈥檚 Quintet, and the deepest image of the cosmos ever taken. Astronomers also showed off the spectrum of light shining through the atmosphere of an exoplanet called WASP-96b, which is a gas giant located about 1150 light years from Earth.

All of these have provided new insights, but the deep-field image (below) has been especially scientifically fruitful. Many of the faint galaxies it shows had never been seen before, and one of them was the most distant galaxy whose composition we had ever been able to measure.

While constructing and launching the telescope was extraordinarily difficult, taking pictures with it has proven relatively quick and easy.

鈥淭he previous record holder [for the deepest image of the cosmos], the Hubble Extreme Deep Field, was two weeks of continuous work with Hubble,鈥� said JWST scientist during the image release event at NASA鈥檚 Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. 鈥淲ith Webb, we took that image before breakfast鈥� We鈥檙e going to be doing discoveries like this every week.鈥�

She wasn鈥檛 exaggerating. After those pictures, the floodgates were open. JWST found the most distant galaxy ever, and then more that were even further away. It has now seen galaxies that could be so far away that they would break our models of galaxy formation and evolution, although it will take more time for their distance from us to be confirmed.

This is the deepest, sharpest infrared image of the cosmos so far. The view of the early Universe toward the southern constellation Volans was achieved in 12.5 hours of exposure with the NIRCam instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope. Of course the stars with six visible spikes are well within our own Milky Way. Their diffraction pattern is characteristic of Webb's 18 hexagonal mirror segments operating together as a single 6.5 meter diameter primary mirror. The thousands of galaxies flooding the field of view are members of the distant galaxy cluster SMACS0723-73, some 4.6 billion light-years away. Luminous arcs that seem to infest the deep field are even more distant galaxies though. Their images are distorted and magnified by the dark matter dominated mass of the galaxy cluster, an effect known as gravitational lensing. Analyzing light from two separate arcs below the bright spiky star, Webb's NIRISS instrument indicates the arcs are both images of the same background galaxy. And that galaxy's light took about 9.5 billion years to reach the James Webb Space Telescope. — JWST鈥檚 first deep-field image provides a look at the early universe
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, NIRCam

It observed galaxy pairs in the process of colliding, their gas slamming together and sparking bursts of star formation, and a galaxy with strange ring structures that formed when another galaxy blasted through its centre. Astronomers were even able to pinpoint the most distant individual star ever seen, almost 20 billion light years more distant than the runner-up, and began investigating what the first stars might have been made of.

The telescope took direct images of exoplanets, which is nearly impossible to do from Earth, and measured their atmospheres. There, it found strange clouds made of sand and spotted carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of an exoplanet for the first time. JWST even recreated the famous Hubble image of the Pillars of Creation (top). And with enough fuel for 25 years of observation or more, this wonderful observatory is just getting started.

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Topics: Astronomy / James Webb space telescope

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